430. Travel Is About Pivoting, Not Perfection
In basketball, one important rule to remember when moving is that you cannot move a “pivot” foot. When you catch a ball, your non-pivot foot can be anywhere as long as your pivot foot is firmly planted, without moving. In the same way, as we move through our life journey, as long as our pivot foot is in the right place firmly, the other foot has a lot of freedom. I believe our spiritual pivot foot is the “Goodness of God”. Once our heart and mind are anchored in that truth—that regardless of what happens in life, God remains good to us, and He can turn “all things” into good for those who love Him (Romans 8:28)—we have a lot of freedom to move.
As I was on a Sabbatical with my family in Korea, many things unfolded differently from what we had planned: unexpected weather, the restaurant being closed (when the map said it should be open), unexpected expenses, and so on. When we travel, the temptation is to plan every detail of the trip and expect our travel plan to unfold perfectly. However, what I’ve experienced from this trip (and many recent trips I’ve taken) is that unexpected places or events bring a lot of joy and freshness to the travel experience.
Such serendipity reminded me that the joy of travel is less about doing everything we planned, but more about allowing the places to show us things we did not expect to see. For example, the random restaurants we visited when we had run out of options often turned out to be a much better option.
This can feel chaotic if we don’t have a steady pivot foot. But when we loosen up without shifting our spiritual pivot foot, we actually allow God to transform our imperfect plan into a better one.
But what keeps us from enjoying the travel is our “thoughts” that begin to doubt if anything good can come out of adverse situations. During such moments, thoughts like “It would’ve been better if we…” or “I should’ve done it this way…” begin to dominate our thoughts. The way to pivot is to “drop” such thoughts quickly and start searching for alternatives. And the best alternative thought is “gratitude”. There is one mantra I taught my kids to say regularly during the trip: Gratitude is my attitude. If complaining is being fixated on the reasons to feel unhappy, gratitude is focused on finding reasons to remain happy. Gratitude allows pivoting to happen. It is an act of faith that God is good "all the time" and that He can turn all things into good for those who love Him.
